These are hard to answer because it depends on roster and team construction. Neither guy is a "OMG!!! I GOTTA HAVE HIM!!!" Jacome will be a decent hitter but can only play 1B. Perez will be a decent back of the rotation or long reliever type. I expect Perez will have a better, yet much shorter, career because he's not going to produce "firstbaseman" numbers.. Perez wil stick around because he can eat innings and will be available in FA late because no one will give him big money.

i think i asked this in this thread before, but i'll be damned if i'm gonna go thru 687 pages to find it. when calculating a player's arb asking price (long term), do they go by overall rating or performance or some combination of both? for instance, if i have a player who is not rated very high overall yet performs at a higher level because he has good ratings where they need to be to be effective, will he ask for less than a guy who is rated better overall yet produces approximately the same stats?

I'm probably going to change my answer due to more recent experiences. I'm almost positive it goes by OVR but, at times, a player who got virtually no playing time will ask for the previous season's salary. So, it seems to me, that there's a minimum amount of playing time required for the OVR rating/arb number to kick in.

Applying the previous questions to pitching... seems to me that everyone looks first for great vL/vR splits. What factors, if any, might compensate for poor-to-average splits? Control? Velocity? GB/FB? Or five pitches?

I've not found anything to compensate for poor splits(sub 50 average). I've had some success with 50ish splits and excellent ratings in the other categories(vel/gb/pitches). Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Esteban Mercado Control definitely helps. Or you could stick him in a pitcher's park with a great D and work around splits(see: deathinahole with his craptastic RP that he always tries to trade).

I'd probably just ignore it. I used to leave 10m for one season when I took a new franchise but I was never "surprised" by a player going apeshit crazy in development. Meaning I didn't have a guy I thought was trash that suddenly looked much better.